11:55 pm Erev Pesah
It is quiet in the house. Almost still. Near midnight, the night before Passover and a truce has descended between me and my work. After 32 years of "making Pesah," I have honed the routine, crafted a system, learned to surrender to the shmutz, the dirt, I cannot vanquish, and revel in the deep cleaning I undertake only once a year.
The house is ready. The cooking awaits. Now is the sweet interregnum of peace.
6:30 am the day of the first seder
It is these preparations, this clean-pause-cook, that is Passover to me. This is my seder. I have my order, the steps I must go through (though the details vary from year to year for I can never remember exactly how I made things fit).
And I have far more than my fair share of questions. Cleaning is meditative, and lets the mind wander. Thoughts range from the mundane (What would happen if I stacked the dishes this way?) to the sublime (How can we ever repay the world, and our loved ones, for the unearned blessings we receive? Or even more somber: how can we bear the pain - and guilt - of knowing there are those who live without such blessings, whom we can never reach, and never help?)
The seder and the week-long food regimen frame the holiday for me. But it is this cleaning, these meditations, and the stillness that sweeps in after all is done, that shape my spiritual center. This is the place where Passover happens for me.
Perhaps it is because of the honesty of Passover. The High Holidays are a time of spiritual cleansing, where we are asked to be pure, to rid ourselves of jealously, pettiness, obsessions, hurt and anger; where we will ourselves to be always good.
Those are lofty, noble ambitions, ones that should serve as our ethical beacon. But they are also unattainable. We always fall short. We always fail. So, like the recidivist ex-smoker, we return to them, and re-commit to them, year after year.
Passover has a more realistic view of life. It understands that though we should reach for perfection, we should accept falling short. The night before Passover has a ritual that teaches us this.
As darkness falls, we should have rid our homes of all hametz, all leavened, puffed up, yeasty food. To be sure that we have succeeded, we sweep through our houses one last time, checking all the nooks and crannies where leavening might be hiding.
There is a grand feeling of accomplishment, job well done, with the completion of this search. And yet, truth be told, there is always that nagging suspicion. Did I get all the shelves? Did I reach far enough into the sofa? Is there a pocket, a drawer, a purse that is hiding a candy bar?
But we are not to worry about that. For the astonishing ritual of bedikat hametz, this last searching for all the hametz, relieves us of the burden of perfection.
After the search, as we set aside all the hametz we found, we recite:
"All hametz that is in my possession which I have not seen, and that I have not cleaned out, and of which I am unaware, is now nullified and declared ownerless. It is as the dust of the earth."
Redemption cannot wait for perfection, else it would never come. So, while on the High Holidays we are bidden to seek the perfect, on Passover we are taught to settle for the best.
As we do with our hametz, so we do with our souls. Once we work as hard as we can, we must forgive our imperfections, declare them null and void, not let them drag down our spirit or ambition.
Passover is indeed the holiday of liberation, an antidote to the slavery of perfection. Enjoy.
May you have a sweet Pesah, filled with the freedom you need, and the blessings you did not earn.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Charlie came to visit last week. He is a life-long naturalist, enchanted with the ways of creation, and committed to sharing his passion and knowledge with others. We met through that passion and my blog.
So when he offered to take me on a tour of my land, two acres of trees, grass and assorted groundcover, how could I say no?
Charlie is the consummate teacher. He brought a storehouse of knowledge, hand-lenses that magnified ten and twenty times, the patience of Job, and an unquenchable curiosity.
Off we went, Charlie, my husband and me. The goal: to enlighten two benighted but repentant souls, eager to now see what we have for too long overlooked.
One of the first things we did was tend to the smudges of green and white on our trees, smudges that I had always ignored, or even found slightly unsightly. But under Charlie's tutelage, we grasped our hand lenses and learned that these stains on our tree trunks were in fact whole villages of life.
They were lichens with the most intricate of lacings and valleys and folds. Exquisite is not too grand a word for these tiny civilizations. And alluring. It would have been grand to have been shrunken and transported, like Mary Poppins into Bert's sidewalk drawings, into this captivating foreign world, to walk around the swirling, crenellated walls. How would it feel to ride out a storm, huddled in the shelter of its caverns and curves? How would our voices sound bouncing off the porous, scalloped sides? What is the quality of light in such crumpled spaces?
We moved on, identifying various trees by the arrangement of their branches, the structure of their leaf buds, the tracings of their bark. We saw where the seventeen-year locusts laid eggs on the branches, damaging if not killing that shoot; we measured how much the tree grew in a year, comparing one year's growth to another. (The difference could be astonishing, as much as 100% more in one year than the next. Was that the year of the drought? Of stress? Who knows what?)
Charlie showed us a magnificent, enormous mushroom covering about a square foot of stump on a grand old tree that was cut down years ago. I had never noticed it before. It is called a turkey tail mushroom because of its undulating surface and its deep, variegated colors. I could not believe how stunning it was, and that I had never noticed it before.
(To see a turkey tail mushroom, click:
http://www.edupic.net/Images/Fungi/turkey_tail_fungi03.JPG)
I asked Charlie about a tree that kept its leaves all winter, turning them to a delicate parchment color, and hanging onto them ferociously, come what may. In a forest, they stand out in the cold months, draping their host in quivering golden tags, grabbing the attention of anyone whose glance sweeps their way.
They were, of course, young beech trees. For some reason, they keep their leaves until early spring, although the mature tree does not. That is what threw me off. Charlie asked me to notice when they lose their leaves.
Charlie asked lots of questions about our trees that Avram and I could not answer, even though we have lived here and been witness to the seasons for ten years. Are the blossoms white on this cherry tree? Does that tree produce whirly-gig seeds? What do the buds of this tree look like? It was shocking to realize what we did not know, and even more, what we had ignored. But no more. We intend to be more attentive this year.
We spent two hours walking outside and even so left much unexplored.
Charlie will be back. He wants to see some of the trees in bloom.
Meanwhile, I looked yesterday. The young beech was naked at last, sporting just a few die-hard leaves. Up close, you can see its tell-tale cigar-shaped and -colored leaf buds. A new season has begun.
Oh, and my apple trees survived the winter and are beginning to leaf.
Just in time for Passover.
May you have a sweet, renewing and discovery-filled holiday.
So when he offered to take me on a tour of my land, two acres of trees, grass and assorted groundcover, how could I say no?
Charlie is the consummate teacher. He brought a storehouse of knowledge, hand-lenses that magnified ten and twenty times, the patience of Job, and an unquenchable curiosity.
Off we went, Charlie, my husband and me. The goal: to enlighten two benighted but repentant souls, eager to now see what we have for too long overlooked.
One of the first things we did was tend to the smudges of green and white on our trees, smudges that I had always ignored, or even found slightly unsightly. But under Charlie's tutelage, we grasped our hand lenses and learned that these stains on our tree trunks were in fact whole villages of life.
They were lichens with the most intricate of lacings and valleys and folds. Exquisite is not too grand a word for these tiny civilizations. And alluring. It would have been grand to have been shrunken and transported, like Mary Poppins into Bert's sidewalk drawings, into this captivating foreign world, to walk around the swirling, crenellated walls. How would it feel to ride out a storm, huddled in the shelter of its caverns and curves? How would our voices sound bouncing off the porous, scalloped sides? What is the quality of light in such crumpled spaces?
We moved on, identifying various trees by the arrangement of their branches, the structure of their leaf buds, the tracings of their bark. We saw where the seventeen-year locusts laid eggs on the branches, damaging if not killing that shoot; we measured how much the tree grew in a year, comparing one year's growth to another. (The difference could be astonishing, as much as 100% more in one year than the next. Was that the year of the drought? Of stress? Who knows what?)
Charlie showed us a magnificent, enormous mushroom covering about a square foot of stump on a grand old tree that was cut down years ago. I had never noticed it before. It is called a turkey tail mushroom because of its undulating surface and its deep, variegated colors. I could not believe how stunning it was, and that I had never noticed it before.
(To see a turkey tail mushroom, click:
http://www.edupic.net/Images/Fungi/turkey_tail_fungi03.JPG)
I asked Charlie about a tree that kept its leaves all winter, turning them to a delicate parchment color, and hanging onto them ferociously, come what may. In a forest, they stand out in the cold months, draping their host in quivering golden tags, grabbing the attention of anyone whose glance sweeps their way.
They were, of course, young beech trees. For some reason, they keep their leaves until early spring, although the mature tree does not. That is what threw me off. Charlie asked me to notice when they lose their leaves.
Charlie asked lots of questions about our trees that Avram and I could not answer, even though we have lived here and been witness to the seasons for ten years. Are the blossoms white on this cherry tree? Does that tree produce whirly-gig seeds? What do the buds of this tree look like? It was shocking to realize what we did not know, and even more, what we had ignored. But no more. We intend to be more attentive this year.
We spent two hours walking outside and even so left much unexplored.
Charlie will be back. He wants to see some of the trees in bloom.
Meanwhile, I looked yesterday. The young beech was naked at last, sporting just a few die-hard leaves. Up close, you can see its tell-tale cigar-shaped and -colored leaf buds. A new season has begun.
Oh, and my apple trees survived the winter and are beginning to leaf.
Just in time for Passover.
May you have a sweet, renewing and discovery-filled holiday.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Passover and power
It’s always something.
Our family seems to be plagued with an odd tradition. The day or two before Passover, some technical disaster is likely to strike. Last year, my mother’s kitchen sink backed up. Another year our fridge went on the blitz, with hours and hours worth of cooking at peril inside. Another time it was the stove; one year it was the dryer. I was hoping this year, with the weather being so beautiful, and the health issue we are still navigating, we would emerge unscathed.
Anechtege tog, as they say. We should only be so lucky! We weren’t.
It was midnight, with Thursday silently dissolving into Friday, when two great flashes lit up the night. After the second flash, darkness. The drill in our house is to quickly bleed the water pipes when the power goes out because we have a well. Without power to work the pump, we have no water. So we move fast to drain the pipes, collecting the water in pots and jars and pitchers and bowls before gravity has its way.
As I rushed to do that, my husband was busy calling BGE. We had bigger problems than the water, he said. Our transformer, the one that hangs on the pole not more than 70 feet or so from the house, blew up. The tree next to it is smoldering, a ring of red embers visible on its side.
The good news was that the outage was limited to two houses. The bad news was that one of them was ours. And it was the weekend before Passover. Of course.
The explosion caused the wires to rip off their housing, so BGE will be here soon, by 3:30 am they say. (It is now 1:04) They don’t like downed wires. One is lying in our driveway.
I keep wondering what sort of lesson I can glean from all this. The Talmud tells us that Rabbi Yohanan taught: “Had the Torah not been given to us, we would have learned modesty from the cat, honesty from the ant, and faithfulness from the dove.” That is an astonishing claim. It professes that the human values that drive decency and civility may be discovered in the very fabric of creation; that nature, the creation of God, harbors the secrets of a good life in its very DNA. We can learn the lessons of the sacred from the natural world around us, if we but know how to look and listen.
I am rather certain that technology, the creation of humanity, cannot do the same. It is hard to learn civility from a toaster. I am sure that a broken oven is just a broken oven, and an exploding transformer is just failed technology. Sitting here in the darkness, the room lit only by the light of my computer screen, listening in the quiet to the rain falling all around, I am reminded just how much we are creatures of this earth, and so utterly dependent on its presence and goodness, even to fire up our technology. For at root, technology is just the creative use of stuff we find, of nature. We cannot make anything. All we do is change the forms of things we have. How blessed we are, then, when the earth is healthy and fertile and abundant, and how cursed we are when it is not.
Pharaoh learned the same lesson. It was, after all, the natural devastation resulting from the plagues that did his nation in. No power, no people, can thrive when their water is undrinkable, their animals sickened, their harvest consumed, their bodies wracked with pain. Civilization was supposed to save us from such natural predators. Instead, it turned into a predator of its own.
Perhaps that is yet another lesson of Passover: that we need to seek redemption not only from the political oppression of other nations, but from the spiritual compulsion of our own behaviors, habits and appetites. That is reason enough for the excessive cleaning and for changing the ways we eat for a week. Just enough time to give us a break to make a new start.
Our family seems to be plagued with an odd tradition. The day or two before Passover, some technical disaster is likely to strike. Last year, my mother’s kitchen sink backed up. Another year our fridge went on the blitz, with hours and hours worth of cooking at peril inside. Another time it was the stove; one year it was the dryer. I was hoping this year, with the weather being so beautiful, and the health issue we are still navigating, we would emerge unscathed.
Anechtege tog, as they say. We should only be so lucky! We weren’t.
It was midnight, with Thursday silently dissolving into Friday, when two great flashes lit up the night. After the second flash, darkness. The drill in our house is to quickly bleed the water pipes when the power goes out because we have a well. Without power to work the pump, we have no water. So we move fast to drain the pipes, collecting the water in pots and jars and pitchers and bowls before gravity has its way.
As I rushed to do that, my husband was busy calling BGE. We had bigger problems than the water, he said. Our transformer, the one that hangs on the pole not more than 70 feet or so from the house, blew up. The tree next to it is smoldering, a ring of red embers visible on its side.
The good news was that the outage was limited to two houses. The bad news was that one of them was ours. And it was the weekend before Passover. Of course.
The explosion caused the wires to rip off their housing, so BGE will be here soon, by 3:30 am they say. (It is now 1:04) They don’t like downed wires. One is lying in our driveway.
I keep wondering what sort of lesson I can glean from all this. The Talmud tells us that Rabbi Yohanan taught: “Had the Torah not been given to us, we would have learned modesty from the cat, honesty from the ant, and faithfulness from the dove.” That is an astonishing claim. It professes that the human values that drive decency and civility may be discovered in the very fabric of creation; that nature, the creation of God, harbors the secrets of a good life in its very DNA. We can learn the lessons of the sacred from the natural world around us, if we but know how to look and listen.
I am rather certain that technology, the creation of humanity, cannot do the same. It is hard to learn civility from a toaster. I am sure that a broken oven is just a broken oven, and an exploding transformer is just failed technology. Sitting here in the darkness, the room lit only by the light of my computer screen, listening in the quiet to the rain falling all around, I am reminded just how much we are creatures of this earth, and so utterly dependent on its presence and goodness, even to fire up our technology. For at root, technology is just the creative use of stuff we find, of nature. We cannot make anything. All we do is change the forms of things we have. How blessed we are, then, when the earth is healthy and fertile and abundant, and how cursed we are when it is not.
Pharaoh learned the same lesson. It was, after all, the natural devastation resulting from the plagues that did his nation in. No power, no people, can thrive when their water is undrinkable, their animals sickened, their harvest consumed, their bodies wracked with pain. Civilization was supposed to save us from such natural predators. Instead, it turned into a predator of its own.
Perhaps that is yet another lesson of Passover: that we need to seek redemption not only from the political oppression of other nations, but from the spiritual compulsion of our own behaviors, habits and appetites. That is reason enough for the excessive cleaning and for changing the ways we eat for a week. Just enough time to give us a break to make a new start.
Monday, March 22, 2010
No such thing as waste
As long as there has been desire, there has been a certain way that men look at women, and women look at men. It is encoded in our genes. It fires us up and drives our spirit.
Lately, it is the same look that steals across my face, and that of my husband, when we spot random wood lying unclaimed by the roadside.
Clearly we are people possessed. My youngest son has noticed and is rather concerned.
We do not menace others on the roads by texting or primping while driving. But we will be distracted by a downed tree, or a cluster of limbs, abandoned on the roadside. "What great firewood that would make," we say to ourselves.
And we rush to tell each other, reporting what we saw and where, noting precisely where the lumber-rich lode is located.
My oldest son, also bemused by his parents odd behavior, is nonetheless indulging our addiction. He called the other day to tell us about a fallen tree on his street, which was being systematically dismantled by professional tree people. My husband arranged for the branches to be cut up into stove-sized nuggets for us to retrieve later. Last Thursday, we went over and collected them.
We were emboldened to speak with other neighbors about their windfall of wood that the storm had brought down. They were only too happy to set aside their arborial flotsam for us. In a matter of days, there were piles of chopped wood - magnolias, pine, maple and poplars - scattered around the neighborhood for us to pick up.
What was unsightly debris to our neighbors was lignin-gold to us.
Which, I suppose, is the point of this blog: in this remarkable, self-sustaining world of ours, there is no such thing as waste.
For over a billion years, nature has brought forth life, and re-absorbed life. The cycle of birth and death, growth and restorative decay is the secret to earth's verdancy and fertility. Without it, earth would have become sterile, its generative resources consumed in a few generations, the stuff of past life lying in lifeless, useless, wasteful heaps scattered all about.
Earth, nature, does not know waste. Neither should we. For most of human existence, all that we made was re-used, and reabsorbed. We were part of nature's cycle of life. The Industrial Revolution and the awesome creativity of human imagination changed that. And because we thought the world was so very big, we thought it could absorb all the trash we made. We could throw things away, over there, far from us.
We know better now. The earth is finite, with limited resources and limited capacity to re-absorb our garbage. There is, as we are learning, no such thing as "away", no such place as "over there". There should also be no such concept as waste. It is all connected. And it all must be recycled.
The 21st century is when we must undo the mistakes of the 19th century. We must banish the very concept of waste. In response to the Industrial Revolution, we must create and drive our own Generative Revolution. We must harness the human will and imagination to build a cyclical, self-renewing society.
We are almost there. It is both an exciting and sacred task. For in its pursuit, and in its success, we truly act as the partners of God that we were created to be.
Lately, it is the same look that steals across my face, and that of my husband, when we spot random wood lying unclaimed by the roadside.
Clearly we are people possessed. My youngest son has noticed and is rather concerned.
We do not menace others on the roads by texting or primping while driving. But we will be distracted by a downed tree, or a cluster of limbs, abandoned on the roadside. "What great firewood that would make," we say to ourselves.
And we rush to tell each other, reporting what we saw and where, noting precisely where the lumber-rich lode is located.
My oldest son, also bemused by his parents odd behavior, is nonetheless indulging our addiction. He called the other day to tell us about a fallen tree on his street, which was being systematically dismantled by professional tree people. My husband arranged for the branches to be cut up into stove-sized nuggets for us to retrieve later. Last Thursday, we went over and collected them.
We were emboldened to speak with other neighbors about their windfall of wood that the storm had brought down. They were only too happy to set aside their arborial flotsam for us. In a matter of days, there were piles of chopped wood - magnolias, pine, maple and poplars - scattered around the neighborhood for us to pick up.
What was unsightly debris to our neighbors was lignin-gold to us.
Which, I suppose, is the point of this blog: in this remarkable, self-sustaining world of ours, there is no such thing as waste.
For over a billion years, nature has brought forth life, and re-absorbed life. The cycle of birth and death, growth and restorative decay is the secret to earth's verdancy and fertility. Without it, earth would have become sterile, its generative resources consumed in a few generations, the stuff of past life lying in lifeless, useless, wasteful heaps scattered all about.
Earth, nature, does not know waste. Neither should we. For most of human existence, all that we made was re-used, and reabsorbed. We were part of nature's cycle of life. The Industrial Revolution and the awesome creativity of human imagination changed that. And because we thought the world was so very big, we thought it could absorb all the trash we made. We could throw things away, over there, far from us.
We know better now. The earth is finite, with limited resources and limited capacity to re-absorb our garbage. There is, as we are learning, no such thing as "away", no such place as "over there". There should also be no such concept as waste. It is all connected. And it all must be recycled.
The 21st century is when we must undo the mistakes of the 19th century. We must banish the very concept of waste. In response to the Industrial Revolution, we must create and drive our own Generative Revolution. We must harness the human will and imagination to build a cyclical, self-renewing society.
We are almost there. It is both an exciting and sacred task. For in its pursuit, and in its success, we truly act as the partners of God that we were created to be.
Friday, March 19, 2010
equinox and equilux
Winter is gone. Even if The Old Man desperately rallies his forces and makes it snow once more, the storm will be cast as an interloper, trespassing on the Great and Welcome Thaw. Funny, we designate the last balmy remnants of summer’s warmth that reassert themselves after the first frost of fall as “Indian summer”, but we have no parallel term to designate the last lusty freeze or snowfall that comes after the advent of spring.
But no matter. We are now firmly in the jolly kingdom of spring. It was, after all, the equilux March 17, when the nighttime and daylight hours were almost, just about, absolutely equal. Or if you are the competitive sort, you can say it was the day when the balance switched and sunlight once again bested the darkness and outlasted it. The sun rose at 7:15 am and set at 7:16 pm, beating out darkness by one minute. (You too can find the exact times for sunrise/sunset and moonrise/moonset at http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneDay.php)
The vernal equinox (“when the ecliptic, the path of the sun, crosses the celestial equator”), which most of us hear about and which marks the official start of spring, will happen tomorrow, March 20 at 1:32 PM EDT. (For equinox and solstice times, check out http://www.erh.noaa.gov/box/equinox.html For a drawing that can help you visualize this event, check out http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/equinox.html )
The difference between these two calendrical moments is this: the equinox is a celestial event, happening at a precise moment in time no matter where you are on earth. The equilux, however, is our local experience of the equinox. Where we are determines what we see, and when. Location and perception define the experience. And it occurs over the extended period of 24 hours, not at a precise, fleeting moment.
How true this is for so many things. There is the reality, and then there is our experience of that reality, depending on where we are, in all sorts of ways.
The hard news is that we have limited ability to change reality. The good news is that we are in total control of the narrative we weave around it. And at bottom, we are all story tellers. Let us choose to tell a story of hope and redemption. For that is the only way we will get there.
Have a freilicher, joyous, vernal equinox.
Shabbat Shalom
But no matter. We are now firmly in the jolly kingdom of spring. It was, after all, the equilux March 17, when the nighttime and daylight hours were almost, just about, absolutely equal. Or if you are the competitive sort, you can say it was the day when the balance switched and sunlight once again bested the darkness and outlasted it. The sun rose at 7:15 am and set at 7:16 pm, beating out darkness by one minute. (You too can find the exact times for sunrise/sunset and moonrise/moonset at http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneDay.php)
The vernal equinox (“when the ecliptic, the path of the sun, crosses the celestial equator”), which most of us hear about and which marks the official start of spring, will happen tomorrow, March 20 at 1:32 PM EDT. (For equinox and solstice times, check out http://www.erh.noaa.gov/box/equinox.html For a drawing that can help you visualize this event, check out http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/equinox.html )
The difference between these two calendrical moments is this: the equinox is a celestial event, happening at a precise moment in time no matter where you are on earth. The equilux, however, is our local experience of the equinox. Where we are determines what we see, and when. Location and perception define the experience. And it occurs over the extended period of 24 hours, not at a precise, fleeting moment.
How true this is for so many things. There is the reality, and then there is our experience of that reality, depending on where we are, in all sorts of ways.
The hard news is that we have limited ability to change reality. The good news is that we are in total control of the narrative we weave around it. And at bottom, we are all story tellers. Let us choose to tell a story of hope and redemption. For that is the only way we will get there.
Have a freilicher, joyous, vernal equinox.
Shabbat Shalom
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
new moon celebration
It is so very dark outside. No wonder. My nifty moon-phase, desk-top gadget tells me that 0% of the earth-side moonface is lit up. It is, after all, the start of a new month. The moon is rising and setting with the sun, hanging out between us and Sol, so the illuminated side of the moon is totally facing away from the earth.
It is hard for us to imagine what such a dark night must have felt like centuries ago, especially for the poor for whom candles and oil were spare and expensive commodities. Today, we just flip the switch and light comes on. Even for the poorest among us, light is not so expensive. If we have power at all, we have light.
But ages ago, to light up a dark night was an indulgence that many could not readily afford. They had to save fuel and lighting supplies for the essentials: warmth, cooking and lighting the home when people were supposed to awake or work needed to be done. To burn precious resources to ward off the terrors of the night was a spiritual luxury only the comfortable could afford.
Why not, then, turn the darkest night of the month into a time of celebration, a time of expected, even mandated light?
So it was in Jerusalem in the days of old. Witnesses from the country-side surrounding the great city were bidden to come to Jerusalem upon glimpsing the first sight of the sliver of the new moon. The date and time of the new moon were not predicted, after all, as is done today. The calendar was not pre-set. The beginning of the month was only declared after either (1) the new moon was officially declared by the Sanhedrin, the high court of Israel, to have been seen or (2) if the nights were cloudy, only after the last possible time of its appearance was at hand.
So, every month, the watch was on! Since the new moon rises with the sun, potential witnesses, eager for the honor of ushering in the new month, would rise early, too. Should they see the new moon, they would hightail it to Jerusalem. There, they would be questioned about the shape and time and details of the moon-rise. If everything passed muster, the new month would be declared.
And to encourage the populace to serve as these first responders, to entice them to make the long journey despite any inconvenience, for the witnesses were all volunteers, they were feted once they were in Jerusalem. A feast was laid out for them all, and their efforts and alertness were celebrated. So the darkest nights of the month were greeted with anticipation, and the second darkest nights of the month were punctuated with torches and company and food and celebration.
What's not to like about such a new moon and such dark nights? May you too celebrate this turning of time toward a new moon, a new month, and a new season of renewal.
It is hard for us to imagine what such a dark night must have felt like centuries ago, especially for the poor for whom candles and oil were spare and expensive commodities. Today, we just flip the switch and light comes on. Even for the poorest among us, light is not so expensive. If we have power at all, we have light.
But ages ago, to light up a dark night was an indulgence that many could not readily afford. They had to save fuel and lighting supplies for the essentials: warmth, cooking and lighting the home when people were supposed to awake or work needed to be done. To burn precious resources to ward off the terrors of the night was a spiritual luxury only the comfortable could afford.
Why not, then, turn the darkest night of the month into a time of celebration, a time of expected, even mandated light?
So it was in Jerusalem in the days of old. Witnesses from the country-side surrounding the great city were bidden to come to Jerusalem upon glimpsing the first sight of the sliver of the new moon. The date and time of the new moon were not predicted, after all, as is done today. The calendar was not pre-set. The beginning of the month was only declared after either (1) the new moon was officially declared by the Sanhedrin, the high court of Israel, to have been seen or (2) if the nights were cloudy, only after the last possible time of its appearance was at hand.
So, every month, the watch was on! Since the new moon rises with the sun, potential witnesses, eager for the honor of ushering in the new month, would rise early, too. Should they see the new moon, they would hightail it to Jerusalem. There, they would be questioned about the shape and time and details of the moon-rise. If everything passed muster, the new month would be declared.
And to encourage the populace to serve as these first responders, to entice them to make the long journey despite any inconvenience, for the witnesses were all volunteers, they were feted once they were in Jerusalem. A feast was laid out for them all, and their efforts and alertness were celebrated. So the darkest nights of the month were greeted with anticipation, and the second darkest nights of the month were punctuated with torches and company and food and celebration.
What's not to like about such a new moon and such dark nights? May you too celebrate this turning of time toward a new moon, a new month, and a new season of renewal.
Friday, March 12, 2010
more lessons from the moon
My friends and I were talking recently about Life, lived life, the personal life that each of us uniquely experiences. One wise woman in the group offered the insight that we seem to have spiritual tasks, life tasks, she called them, that define our work at various ages. Pursuing well each task in its due time is a secret to life's fulfillment.
Over the past two weeks, I found this conversation weaving in and out of my thoughts, ultimately latching onto my musings about the moon. The moon's passages and ours seem to reflect and reinforce each other.
In its first phase, the moon is new, diffident, gazing to the east from which it comes, backing into this world with its curved, closed edge leading the way, unsure of what it will find. Alone, on its own, it has to feel its way, all the while working on bulking up and filling out, gaining confidence and becoming itself as it cruises through the night sky.
(click on the blog title to see the many phases of the moon)
So too for us. Early childhood is when we separate from a source beyond our view. It is a time when we must most tend to our personal growth. It is when we are and should be the main characters of our personal narrative. We must concentrate on putting ourselves together, filling that space that is waiting for us to claim it, minding and crafting the "me" that will form the foundation of all we become. Being self-absorbed, to a reasonable degree, is our task. First with diffidence and then with growing confidence, we constantly probe for who we are, what we like, what we believe, testing and probing our edges.
In its second phase, the moon fills out, the concave expanding to convex, the maturing moon struggling to feel more confident, puffing up with a sense of self, strutting its stuff to attract attention, wondering what the others are thinking of it. A bit pock-marked, a bit awkward, the moon nonetheless begins to show signs of the beauty and quiet power it already possesses but still needs the confidence to fully own.
So too for us. This second phase of life is when we begin to fill out, come into our own, posture for place, work on a public face. We increasingly desire to be not alone but within the constellation of others. We become aware of others' simultaneous strivings for place. We are not yet fully-formed but have enough of an idea of self that we can begin to imagine what we will ultimately look like, be like. We begin to shine with enough light to illuminate others as well as ourselves.
In its third phase, the moon is full, robust, confidently gathering others around it, hosting the now chattering stars in heaven's timeless nocturnal confabulation. The moon is in its prime. Its markings, a source of embarrassment when young, now afford it distinguished identity. The magnificent, radiant, southern starburst is visible in its full glory, highlighted by the darker patches above.
So too for us. In the prime of our lives, we are full, robust. Our confidence and influence are at their peak. It is just now that we can accept our markings and scars, our limitations and weaknesses without the embarrassment of youth but rather as truths of a life fully explored and honestly engaged. We have done what we could, our faces brightened by our successes, such as they are. And in our light, made more radiant by the struggles we encountered along the way, we lead the way for others, and begin to plan the legacy we want to leave behind.
In its fourth phase, the moon dims. Though its energies diminish, it offers the promise of brightness in the coming dark times, reminding us that even a glimmer is enough to set our compass by. It teaches lessons of softness in a tough and harsh world. It travels toward its destiny face forward, carrying its dignity even as it weakens and wanes, giving off as much light as its thinning edge can manage.
So too for us. Our old age is not always as kind as we would like it to be. But if we have lived well, we can still carry ourselves with dignity; we can still give off light and wisdom deep into our fading days. But as our place in the heavens diminishes, we release our hold on the sky and give way to the pale brilliance of emerging stars.
And when our time is done, the night is dark. The world mourns the passing of a great, tender light. We do not pass unnoticed. Yet the loss does not hold; the world turns once more and the heavens reveal the birth of a new moon.
The next new moon is Monday night, March 15. It marks the beginning of the month of Nissan, the month of Passover, freedom and renewal. May the drama, the lessons, the glory begin again.
Over the past two weeks, I found this conversation weaving in and out of my thoughts, ultimately latching onto my musings about the moon. The moon's passages and ours seem to reflect and reinforce each other.
In its first phase, the moon is new, diffident, gazing to the east from which it comes, backing into this world with its curved, closed edge leading the way, unsure of what it will find. Alone, on its own, it has to feel its way, all the while working on bulking up and filling out, gaining confidence and becoming itself as it cruises through the night sky.
(click on the blog title to see the many phases of the moon)
So too for us. Early childhood is when we separate from a source beyond our view. It is a time when we must most tend to our personal growth. It is when we are and should be the main characters of our personal narrative. We must concentrate on putting ourselves together, filling that space that is waiting for us to claim it, minding and crafting the "me" that will form the foundation of all we become. Being self-absorbed, to a reasonable degree, is our task. First with diffidence and then with growing confidence, we constantly probe for who we are, what we like, what we believe, testing and probing our edges.
In its second phase, the moon fills out, the concave expanding to convex, the maturing moon struggling to feel more confident, puffing up with a sense of self, strutting its stuff to attract attention, wondering what the others are thinking of it. A bit pock-marked, a bit awkward, the moon nonetheless begins to show signs of the beauty and quiet power it already possesses but still needs the confidence to fully own.
So too for us. This second phase of life is when we begin to fill out, come into our own, posture for place, work on a public face. We increasingly desire to be not alone but within the constellation of others. We become aware of others' simultaneous strivings for place. We are not yet fully-formed but have enough of an idea of self that we can begin to imagine what we will ultimately look like, be like. We begin to shine with enough light to illuminate others as well as ourselves.
In its third phase, the moon is full, robust, confidently gathering others around it, hosting the now chattering stars in heaven's timeless nocturnal confabulation. The moon is in its prime. Its markings, a source of embarrassment when young, now afford it distinguished identity. The magnificent, radiant, southern starburst is visible in its full glory, highlighted by the darker patches above.
So too for us. In the prime of our lives, we are full, robust. Our confidence and influence are at their peak. It is just now that we can accept our markings and scars, our limitations and weaknesses without the embarrassment of youth but rather as truths of a life fully explored and honestly engaged. We have done what we could, our faces brightened by our successes, such as they are. And in our light, made more radiant by the struggles we encountered along the way, we lead the way for others, and begin to plan the legacy we want to leave behind.
In its fourth phase, the moon dims. Though its energies diminish, it offers the promise of brightness in the coming dark times, reminding us that even a glimmer is enough to set our compass by. It teaches lessons of softness in a tough and harsh world. It travels toward its destiny face forward, carrying its dignity even as it weakens and wanes, giving off as much light as its thinning edge can manage.
So too for us. Our old age is not always as kind as we would like it to be. But if we have lived well, we can still carry ourselves with dignity; we can still give off light and wisdom deep into our fading days. But as our place in the heavens diminishes, we release our hold on the sky and give way to the pale brilliance of emerging stars.
And when our time is done, the night is dark. The world mourns the passing of a great, tender light. We do not pass unnoticed. Yet the loss does not hold; the world turns once more and the heavens reveal the birth of a new moon.
The next new moon is Monday night, March 15. It marks the beginning of the month of Nissan, the month of Passover, freedom and renewal. May the drama, the lessons, the glory begin again.
Peepers again!
The vernal equinox may still officially be one week away, but spring has already begun. The peepers are here! (Click on the blog title to get a link to learn more about them.)
I listened for them last night, for they usually emerge this time of year around my neighbor's lush pond. Herons come occasionally there, too, and the pond is annually stocked with very large fish. It is fed by a tiny stream that runs throughout our neighborhood, widening into a pair of stepped ponds right on my neighbor's property. They are joined by a gentle waterfall and spill out into the ravine that rises once more on the other side before it dives into Greenspring valley.
My neighbor's living room overlooks this water delight. I am jealous. But then again, he works very hard to keep it so beautiful.
So, I listened last night for the peepers, thinking that any day they will appear. But I heard nothing.
Then this evening, when I stepped outside the Verizon store in Pikesville, I was overwhelmed by a robust, very loud chorus of peepers! Evidently, between the strip mall and the apartments just south of there, a series of ponds plays host to a whole congregation of peepers. For there they were, singing their little (and they are little) hearts out, hoping for love and the ability to mate. That seems to be their primary task this time of year.
The air was redolent with the soft smells of spring, with nature stirring, loosening, awakening. The peepers seemed to be calling not only to each other but to us as well, that we too should rouse ourselves and shake off the dust (or ashes) from our cozy winter nesting, open wide our arms and breathe in the fresh air of a new year.
I hope to make one or two more fires in my stove, and then retire it for the duration, til fall calls me back.
And I have all but given up on one last, welcome blast of a snow storm.
Not to worry! I have plenty of wood to work on over the summer to keep me happy.
May you, too, have a glorious spring.
I listened for them last night, for they usually emerge this time of year around my neighbor's lush pond. Herons come occasionally there, too, and the pond is annually stocked with very large fish. It is fed by a tiny stream that runs throughout our neighborhood, widening into a pair of stepped ponds right on my neighbor's property. They are joined by a gentle waterfall and spill out into the ravine that rises once more on the other side before it dives into Greenspring valley.
My neighbor's living room overlooks this water delight. I am jealous. But then again, he works very hard to keep it so beautiful.
So, I listened last night for the peepers, thinking that any day they will appear. But I heard nothing.
Then this evening, when I stepped outside the Verizon store in Pikesville, I was overwhelmed by a robust, very loud chorus of peepers! Evidently, between the strip mall and the apartments just south of there, a series of ponds plays host to a whole congregation of peepers. For there they were, singing their little (and they are little) hearts out, hoping for love and the ability to mate. That seems to be their primary task this time of year.
The air was redolent with the soft smells of spring, with nature stirring, loosening, awakening. The peepers seemed to be calling not only to each other but to us as well, that we too should rouse ourselves and shake off the dust (or ashes) from our cozy winter nesting, open wide our arms and breathe in the fresh air of a new year.
I hope to make one or two more fires in my stove, and then retire it for the duration, til fall calls me back.
And I have all but given up on one last, welcome blast of a snow storm.
Not to worry! I have plenty of wood to work on over the summer to keep me happy.
May you, too, have a glorious spring.
Monday, March 8, 2010
lessons of the moon
I write this under the sleepy, half-drooping eye of the waning Adar moon. It is 42% full and on its way to getting smaller. (I know this courtesy of the nifty gadget I have installed on my desktop - which you can access by clicking the title of this post.) It is wrestling itself free from the tangle of branches that have captured it just outside my window.
These moments of encounter are always a delight. It is as if I have once again discovered one of the greatest shows on earth unfolding on the biggest stage we know free for the asking. But these moments also conjure up a bit of regret. They carry the same emotional mix that comes with bumping into an old friend. On the one hand, we are thrilled to see them, to gaze upon their face, listen to their voice and be in their presence. On the other, their very presence reminds us how much we miss them.
To rediscover the moon means that I am aware of how often I ignore it. Each time I promise to be more faithful, more attentive, more present. And each time I am not.
The moon, though, is very forgiving. It always comes back. And today, as I again make my amends, my apologies and my re-acquaintance, I think about the complex character of this glowing orb: the constancy of its transit over the stretch of a year and its changeable moods across the course of a month.
On the one hand, the moon, like the sun, plies a predictable path through the expanse of heaven, day in and day out, year in and year out. No matter the storms that are raging or the fights we are having. No matter if everyone is watching, or no one is. The moon is faithful. It will pursue and complete its journey.
On the other hand, unlike the sun or the stars, the moon is fickle, presenting a new face on a daily basis. Open or shut, dark or light, joyous or fearful. In this, it is just like many of us, fighting or celebrating or sometimes surrendering to the moods and passions of each new day.
There is much that the elegant joining of these two aspects – change and constancy - can teach us. We are volatile creatures, after all, tantalized by, dependent on and subject to change. We are also stable creatures, soothed by and in need of repetition, return, and the constancy of home. The moon offers us a way to weave both into our lives.
Even as the daily storms of life swirl around us, catching us in their vortices and turning us all about, even as we seek adventures that sail us past the ends of our maps and send us off the edges of our world, we can be comforted by the constant passages we are bound to keep, the well-worn paths now ours to trod, the promises that lead us home. Change and constancy; surprise and habit. The moon is our model in this complex dance.
These moments of encounter are always a delight. It is as if I have once again discovered one of the greatest shows on earth unfolding on the biggest stage we know free for the asking. But these moments also conjure up a bit of regret. They carry the same emotional mix that comes with bumping into an old friend. On the one hand, we are thrilled to see them, to gaze upon their face, listen to their voice and be in their presence. On the other, their very presence reminds us how much we miss them.
To rediscover the moon means that I am aware of how often I ignore it. Each time I promise to be more faithful, more attentive, more present. And each time I am not.
The moon, though, is very forgiving. It always comes back. And today, as I again make my amends, my apologies and my re-acquaintance, I think about the complex character of this glowing orb: the constancy of its transit over the stretch of a year and its changeable moods across the course of a month.
On the one hand, the moon, like the sun, plies a predictable path through the expanse of heaven, day in and day out, year in and year out. No matter the storms that are raging or the fights we are having. No matter if everyone is watching, or no one is. The moon is faithful. It will pursue and complete its journey.
On the other hand, unlike the sun or the stars, the moon is fickle, presenting a new face on a daily basis. Open or shut, dark or light, joyous or fearful. In this, it is just like many of us, fighting or celebrating or sometimes surrendering to the moods and passions of each new day.
There is much that the elegant joining of these two aspects – change and constancy - can teach us. We are volatile creatures, after all, tantalized by, dependent on and subject to change. We are also stable creatures, soothed by and in need of repetition, return, and the constancy of home. The moon offers us a way to weave both into our lives.
Even as the daily storms of life swirl around us, catching us in their vortices and turning us all about, even as we seek adventures that sail us past the ends of our maps and send us off the edges of our world, we can be comforted by the constant passages we are bound to keep, the well-worn paths now ours to trod, the promises that lead us home. Change and constancy; surprise and habit. The moon is our model in this complex dance.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Perek Shira - nature as text
It is early March, and, though I am mindful of all the countervailing arguments, I am still hoping for one more whopping, traffic-stopping, history-making, child-delighting, society-slowing, sofa-cuddling, awe-inspiring snowstorm.
But I hold this admittedly minority view all the more desperately because to step outside these days is to feel Spring stirring in its chambers, pacing outside the door, waiting to be let in.
The birds are more active, too, more present and more vocal. The buds are pushing their way up and out. The air has lost its sting.
It is at this time of year that the remarkable and mysterious book called Perek Shira, the Book of Song, comes to mind. It is of unknown date and origin, but is a lilting celebration of God's creation, arrayed in 84 short sections of praise to the natural world. It focuses on the different elements, species, aspects of the natural world from light and darkness to rain and dew, cats and lions and wilderness and seas.
What makes this short, enigmatic book unique in all of Jewish literary history is that it weaves the worlds of nature and Torah together. Indeed even more, it treats nature like Torah, as a text to be studied, loved and mined for all the moral, theological and spiritual meanings it will yield.
To the modern mind, Perek Shira is likely to be seen as more charming than substantive, more delightful than instructive, more a curiosity than a text for study. But it is nonetheless a captivating and remarkable book. For we need to imagine this book being written in a culture that kept nature at arm's length, fearing the possible pagan seduction of nature, fearing that the confusion of Creator with creation would bring Jews to worship the created instead of the Creator.
And yet, in spite of all that, this book was written. True, it was almost lost. It is not part of the canon of mandatory texts that are taught in yeshivas or seminaries; not part of the standard curriculum of congregational schools. But it is making a come-back. A true sign of the times. ("Google" Perek Shira and see all the hits you will get.)
It is not properly about nature itself. Nor is it about nature as resource or commodity. Rather it is about nature as a messenger from God, a tool of the Divine, a call, a prod, an inspiration to a dispirited people. The book seems to have been written in a dark time for the Jews. In response, the book seems to be saying, Do not despair! The answer to your needs, the cure for your despondency, is all around you. See and listen. Nature, that is, God's messenger, offers you hope and guidance, fortitude and promise.
Embedded in its short passages are these fundamental messages:
1) praise God the Creator of all
2) celebrate nature for it is God's creation
3) learn from nature for it possesses unique lessons for the Jewish people when read through the lens of Torah
4) the bleakness around you will not endure
5) if you do good, you will merit goodness in return
6) work hard
7) be moral
That is Perek Shira on one foot. Now we must go and study.
But I hold this admittedly minority view all the more desperately because to step outside these days is to feel Spring stirring in its chambers, pacing outside the door, waiting to be let in.
The birds are more active, too, more present and more vocal. The buds are pushing their way up and out. The air has lost its sting.
It is at this time of year that the remarkable and mysterious book called Perek Shira, the Book of Song, comes to mind. It is of unknown date and origin, but is a lilting celebration of God's creation, arrayed in 84 short sections of praise to the natural world. It focuses on the different elements, species, aspects of the natural world from light and darkness to rain and dew, cats and lions and wilderness and seas.
What makes this short, enigmatic book unique in all of Jewish literary history is that it weaves the worlds of nature and Torah together. Indeed even more, it treats nature like Torah, as a text to be studied, loved and mined for all the moral, theological and spiritual meanings it will yield.
To the modern mind, Perek Shira is likely to be seen as more charming than substantive, more delightful than instructive, more a curiosity than a text for study. But it is nonetheless a captivating and remarkable book. For we need to imagine this book being written in a culture that kept nature at arm's length, fearing the possible pagan seduction of nature, fearing that the confusion of Creator with creation would bring Jews to worship the created instead of the Creator.
And yet, in spite of all that, this book was written. True, it was almost lost. It is not part of the canon of mandatory texts that are taught in yeshivas or seminaries; not part of the standard curriculum of congregational schools. But it is making a come-back. A true sign of the times. ("Google" Perek Shira and see all the hits you will get.)
It is not properly about nature itself. Nor is it about nature as resource or commodity. Rather it is about nature as a messenger from God, a tool of the Divine, a call, a prod, an inspiration to a dispirited people. The book seems to have been written in a dark time for the Jews. In response, the book seems to be saying, Do not despair! The answer to your needs, the cure for your despondency, is all around you. See and listen. Nature, that is, God's messenger, offers you hope and guidance, fortitude and promise.
Embedded in its short passages are these fundamental messages:
1) praise God the Creator of all
2) celebrate nature for it is God's creation
3) learn from nature for it possesses unique lessons for the Jewish people when read through the lens of Torah
4) the bleakness around you will not endure
5) if you do good, you will merit goodness in return
6) work hard
7) be moral
That is Perek Shira on one foot. Now we must go and study.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
the nature of wood
I had a fight with my stove today. I suppose it was bound to happen. I was ignoring the beech, burning almost exclusively the tulip poplar, which is easy to split, easy to saw, easy to burn. My beech was clearly getting jealous, feeling neglected and overlooked. So, in honor of my success in splitting the beech logs, and eager to make amends, I went to burn my beech.
What I did not know was that here, too, beech is a bit bitchy. It is a finicky burn. It likes much a hotter stove, a more fire-y box than the poplar. It takes more heat, more energy, to get it to burn. The small bit of tinder and starter logs I can use to get a raging poplar burn going did not do it for the beech. The box stayed cold; the early flames died down. The beech resisted all efforts to coax it out of its angry funk. It sat there, arms folded, wrapping around and around itself. (That is what the circular markings in the bark looked like; the wood closing in on itself, keeping me and the flames out, refusing to open up and embrace the fire.)
I tried several times to make up to it. I slipped rolled up sheets of newspaper, peppered with tinder, under the two beech logs, lit them and watched as the conflagration roared. The beech, I hoped, would surely warm to this. I tried it once, and twice, and a third time. Nothing doing.
With tinder harvesting still a few days away (the fallen twigs are both largely covered with snow and very wet), I dole out my tinder quite sparingly. It was time to stop throwing good wood after bad.
So I did the only thing I could. I cleared out the slightly charred but resistant beech logs, and started a fire with my reliable poplar. Once I got that up and going, I gingerly placed the smaller beech log in the readied stove, in the belly of the beast, in the midst of the flames. The beech finally warmed to my ministerings, forgave me my transgressions, and gave itself to the fire.
What is amazing is how the beech burns. While the poplar seems to absorb the fire, taking it into its core, soaking in the flames, the beech wears its fire like a coat. The flames appear to float upon its surface, like those that dance upon liqueur poured into a dish or upon food en flambe. The flames of the poplar wrap themselves around the log, licking the wood as if to taste its goodness. The flames on the beech, quite differently, go shooting out, as if escaping through castle portals, never looking back, never acknowledging the source of their energy.
It is obvious by now that I am totally captured, totally enrapt, by the whole enterprise of burning wood. What I love is the intimacy of knowledge that I gain through handling it and observing it. To know intellectually that wood has different grains, different densities and hardnesses, different feels and qualities, is one thing. We all know this. George Nakashima, the great wood-worker and furniture maker, lived his life and honed his craft in response to the distinctive gifts of each piece of wood.
But to see it for yourself, to experience it, to watch your wood act out its distinctiveness under the press of your hand or behind the tempered glass of your stove, is to be awed, to become a humble student of the mysteries of nature.
For me, it is my stove. For musicians, it is the touch and sound of their instrument. For scientists it is the particular valence of a metal or the measure of a wave-length. Whatever it is, we each need that connection. For the sake of our souls, for the sake of the world, for the profound sense of awe it can bring us, each of us should find a way to become intimate with the physical world. It is a profound gift and healing teacher.
What I did not know was that here, too, beech is a bit bitchy. It is a finicky burn. It likes much a hotter stove, a more fire-y box than the poplar. It takes more heat, more energy, to get it to burn. The small bit of tinder and starter logs I can use to get a raging poplar burn going did not do it for the beech. The box stayed cold; the early flames died down. The beech resisted all efforts to coax it out of its angry funk. It sat there, arms folded, wrapping around and around itself. (That is what the circular markings in the bark looked like; the wood closing in on itself, keeping me and the flames out, refusing to open up and embrace the fire.)
I tried several times to make up to it. I slipped rolled up sheets of newspaper, peppered with tinder, under the two beech logs, lit them and watched as the conflagration roared. The beech, I hoped, would surely warm to this. I tried it once, and twice, and a third time. Nothing doing.
With tinder harvesting still a few days away (the fallen twigs are both largely covered with snow and very wet), I dole out my tinder quite sparingly. It was time to stop throwing good wood after bad.
So I did the only thing I could. I cleared out the slightly charred but resistant beech logs, and started a fire with my reliable poplar. Once I got that up and going, I gingerly placed the smaller beech log in the readied stove, in the belly of the beast, in the midst of the flames. The beech finally warmed to my ministerings, forgave me my transgressions, and gave itself to the fire.
What is amazing is how the beech burns. While the poplar seems to absorb the fire, taking it into its core, soaking in the flames, the beech wears its fire like a coat. The flames appear to float upon its surface, like those that dance upon liqueur poured into a dish or upon food en flambe. The flames of the poplar wrap themselves around the log, licking the wood as if to taste its goodness. The flames on the beech, quite differently, go shooting out, as if escaping through castle portals, never looking back, never acknowledging the source of their energy.
It is obvious by now that I am totally captured, totally enrapt, by the whole enterprise of burning wood. What I love is the intimacy of knowledge that I gain through handling it and observing it. To know intellectually that wood has different grains, different densities and hardnesses, different feels and qualities, is one thing. We all know this. George Nakashima, the great wood-worker and furniture maker, lived his life and honed his craft in response to the distinctive gifts of each piece of wood.
But to see it for yourself, to experience it, to watch your wood act out its distinctiveness under the press of your hand or behind the tempered glass of your stove, is to be awed, to become a humble student of the mysteries of nature.
For me, it is my stove. For musicians, it is the touch and sound of their instrument. For scientists it is the particular valence of a metal or the measure of a wave-length. Whatever it is, we each need that connection. For the sake of our souls, for the sake of the world, for the profound sense of awe it can bring us, each of us should find a way to become intimate with the physical world. It is a profound gift and healing teacher.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)